About PredPol

PredPol is The Best Predictive Policing Company

PredPol aims to reduce victimization and keep communities safer. Our day-to-day operations tool identifies where and when crime is most likely to occur enabling you to effectively allocate your resources and prevent crime.

We’re people who care about people. The core value of PredPol is reducing victimization and maximizing limited resources.

PredPol aims to keep communities safer. Our day-to-day operations tool identifies where and when crime is most likely to occur so that you can effectively allocate your patrol resources and prevent crime.

PredPol’s Background

PredPol grew out of a research project between the Los Angeles Police Department and UCLA. The chief at the time, Bill Bratton, wanted to find a way to use CompStat data for more than just historical purposes. The goal was to understand if this data could provide any forward-looking recommendations as to where and when additional crimes could occur. Being able to anticipate these crime locations and times could allow officers to pre-emptively deploy and help prevent these crimes.

Working with mathematicians and behavioral scientists from UCLA and Santa Clara University, the team evaluated a wide variety of data types and behavioral and forecasting models.

The models were further refined with crime analysts and officers from LAPD and the Santa Cruz Police Department. They ultimately determined that the three most objective data points collected by police departments provided the best input data for forecasting:

Crime type

Crime location

Crime date and time

The current PredPol platform represents a significant investment of over 70 research-years of PhD-level analysis, modeling and development. It has been tested and proven in dozens of departments of all sizes in multiple countries around the world.

“The theory is that you prevent them from committing the crime to begin with…Burglars and thieves work in a mathematical way, whether they know it or not.” Modesto Police Chief Galen Carroll (Modesto Bee, July 27, 2014)

PredPol’s Management Team

Chris Kelly

Chris Kelly, chairman of the board at PredPol, was the first General Counsel, Chief Privacy Officer and Head of Global Public Policy for Facebook. Prior to joining Facebook, he advised some of the most innovative Internet and media clients on the increasing challenges of intellectual property and privacy protection in the digital age. Before that, Kelly clerked for federal Judge Barry Moskowitz of the United States District Court in San Diego, assisting on a range of cases, including drug smuggling, immigration and money laundering. As a former policy advisor for President Clinton’s White House Domestic Policy Council and Department of Education, he worked on important domestic programs, including the successful initiative to put 100,000 new community police officers on America’s streets and the formation of AmeriCorps, a network of national service programs that engage Americans in community service for education, public safety, health, and the environment.

Kelly received his undergraduate degree from Georgetown University, a master’s degree from Yale University, and his law degree from Harvard University.

Brian MacDonald

Brian MacDonald is the CEO at PredPol. Mr. MacDonald has held executive-level sales, marketing and general management roles in the technology industry for more than 25 years.

He joins PredPol most recently from Vidcie, an In-Q-Tel company, where as VP of Sales he introduced cloud-based security technologies into federal agencies, local law enforcement and Fortune 500 companies. Previous roles include VP of Carrier Relations at deCarta, a location-based services company, and VP of sales at Danger (now Microsoft), where he helped launch the first consumer smartphone.

Mr. MacDonald spent the early part of his career in Washington, DC and London. Throughout his career, three of his companies have been acquired and one had a successful IPO. He holds undergraduate degrees from the University of California at Santa Barbara and did his graduate work in political theory at Georgetown and Oxford.

Dr. Jeff Brantingham

Jeff Brantingham is a PredPol co-founder and a Professor of Anthropology at UCLA. In addition, Dr. Brantingham serves as the Director of UC MaSC Project: Mathematical and Simulation Modeling of Crime. His research concerns how people use complex urban environments in routine ways and the consequences of these interactions for the patterning of crime events. Dr. Brantingham’s research on crime modeling and predictive policing has been featured in the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Popular Science, WIRED and other international news outlets.

Dr. George Mohler

George Mohler is a co-founder of PredPol and a member of the board of directors. His research on crime modeling and predictive policing has been featured in the New York Times, the Economist, TIME, Popular Science, and other international news outlets. Mohler has also held faculty positions at UCLA, Santa Clara University, and currently at Indiana University – Purdue University Indianapolis.